So, now I have read all the Marian keyes-books she has written (or has been published) this far. Marian keyes is always Marian Keyes. U can never really hate it. Whatever u dislike in the book, u can never claim it wasn't entertaraining... (in my opinion, but hey this whole thing is about my opinion...)
Well, this time the caracters are as follows: Gemma Hogan, event organizer who's dad has left her mum, Lily Wright, Gemma's ex-best friend who has stolen her boyfriend and author who is stuck after having wrote a very succesful novel, Jojo Harvey, Lily's literary agent who has an afair with her boss. My faorite character is Jojo. She's great, though, even thou I don't like the afair thing. A woman should never let a man two-time her whatever the man says, so actually Jojo isn't perfect, but a little stupid, but maybe that makes her human (that and other things). Gemma and Lily I didn't like that much. They don't have that something that makes me love them. Anyway. The book is pretty well constructed. MK runs three different stories about three different people parallelly. The title The other side of the story refers to Lily and Gemma, cos they hate each other and haven't spoken to each other since Lily got together with Gemmas (ex-)boyfriend. They would need to know the other side of the story... The first part of the book was about Gemma, and it made me think that Lily was an awful person, but in fact she wan't that awful. Actually Gemma was the most awful...
But then to what't lacking/missing in this book: This is the first MK-book I've read that doesn't deal with her favorite theme: low selfesteem. None of the characters suffers of low selfesteem, which someone has done in all other MK-books. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing that she has left that out for exchange... The other thing I miss in the book is that is not much character development, which MK is very good at. (Think the Walsh sisters, think Lucy Sullivan, think Tara and Catherine in The Last Chance Saloon...) None of the characters in The Other Side changes that much, or realizes something about them selfs. No real revealing of secters of the past. All that MK is a genius at writning about.
And then one thing that I realized about MK: She has started to write about thinks that you would definitely think people would want to read about. Her first books didn't deal with that "fancy" things, but obviously with things that her own life inspired her to write about (Watermelon, Rachel's Holiday and Lucy Sullivan). And now I'm talking about the environment where the books takes place and not necessaryly the plot or whatever. But think about the later books. Last Chance Saloon -adverticing, Angelns -Los Angeles, film, Suchi -woman's magazine editing, and now The other side in the lirerary world (+event organizing). So, MK writes about what her readers want to read about. But maybe that's not so odd (or something to critisize), cos MK is like her readers, one of them, so why shouldn't she write about waht they want to read about cos that's what she want's to write about.
And then one last comment on the ending: Trendi magazine sayd that the ending wasn't that good even thou the rest of the book was. Well, I think the ending was quite ok. MK has (often) been critisized for too sugar sweet endings, and, well I do agree sometimes. But The Other Side didn't have a too sugar sweet ending apart from for Gemma.
So all in all very entertarining. MK is very good to use as a "trigger" when u have to study. One chapter of the boring "study book" and then a little of The Other Side... Like that. But last night I ended up never picking up the boring book anymore after having took up The other Side. I couldn't stop reading and read till one a'clock at night when I finnished the book, and so I'm a little behind in my study shedule, but never mind, I'll catch up today...
And for the mention of readers reviews at Amazon. Thanks! That was a good tip, Now I'm going to put up some of my reviews there even thou it might not be (is definitely not) as good as Bokhyllan. Anyway, at Amazon someone wondered if MK had been "sponsored" to mention it (like they planed in the book)... I wonder too, but I don't think so, cos it's ridiculous anyway.